Freezer Burn

Eighteen

Couple days later, one night after the suckers had left, Bill, unable to sleep, as usual, was outside the Ice Man’s trailer pissing in the dirt. He could have pissed inside in the toilet, but here he was out in the night with an urge to go. It was a cool night, still damp from all the rain they had been getting, and there was a low fog over everything. Bill felt as if he were in a bottle with a cotton stopper, like those killing bottles they used for bugs, where you put the bug in and soaked the cotton in alcohol or something and stuck it in the bottle top and the bug died from the fumes.

There were still some lights left on from the carnival and there were a couple porch lights burning on trailers, and everything looked hot out there, even if it wasn’t. The whirligig had not been dismantled, and wouldn’t be until tomorrow. It looked like a wheel that had come off one of God’s toys and been forgotten.

Bill could hear the two-headed nigger playing juke and soul music tapes in their trailer. They did that a lot and sometimes turned it up too loud and had to be gotten on to, but tonight he could hear it and it was just loud enough and he liked the song. “Soul Man.”

He listened while he drained his lizard, then packed up and was about to step inside and crack open a J.D. Hardin Western book with fucking in it, when the tune changed and the music cranked up with the Isley Brothers singing “Shout.” He listened to that a few seconds, then the two-headed nigger’s trailer door burst open and the two-headed nigger danced out.

Or sort of danced. Bill couldn’t rightly decide if it was dancing. He, or they, were falling all over the pasture, dipping here, jerking there. Two pea brains caught up in rhythms that a single body couldn’t define.

They tried to go different ways and the heads were singing and weren’t very good at it. Eventually they fell down in the pasture and ended up doing what they did at meals, writhing in the wet grass, screaming and yelling, slapping at each other with their hands, causing as much damage to themselves by striking as by getting hit. They sounded drunk.

The yelling and the music popped heads out of trailers, and Bill saw one of the heads was U.S. Grant. She was in a short nightie, and she was standing in a crack in the door, looking out to see what was going on. Bill could see a face behind her, lit up by the little porch light on her trailer. It was Phil of the Constant Half-Hard Dick. His head seemed to be floating just behind her shoulder, like a helium-filled balloon on a string. Phil’s arm was visible too, around U.S. Grant’s ample waist. He probably thought he couldn’t be seen, but Bill could see him.

And so could Conrad.

Due to the rain, Conrad had not been at his post on top of Frost’s trailer. Where he had been Bill was uncertain, but Conrad suddenly crossed the gap between the Pickled Punk trailer and U.S. Grant’s trailer; the music and the yelling had stirred him the way it had everyone else.

Conrad loped on all fours up the steps to U.S. Grant’s trailer and between her legs, knocking her backwards inside. In the next instant there was a bloodcurdling scream and Phil came leaping out of the trailer butt naked, a gash in his buttock, his greasy hair rolling all over his head. Blood flew out of the wound as he hopped and the drops seemed to rise up in slow motion and hang in place and become like jewels in the odd cotton-covered night and the carnival lights, then the drops fell and exploded in the damp grass.

Bill couldn’t help but note Phil’s pecker wasn’t half hard. He could tell that even from a distance. You couldn’t even see it, it was such a peanut. The cool air, the fact that a dog with a razor was flying out of an open trailer door after him wasn’t something to give it much size either.

“You sonofabitch,” Conrad said, “I’m gonna make you look like a highway map.”

Phil nimbly leaped and hopped and avoided the slashing razor. “We weren’t doin’ nothin’! Jest watchin’ TV.”

“Naked!”

Conrad flashed the razor again and Phil screamed and jumped back and Conrad jumped with him and the razor went out and then Phil was trying to fight back by kicking. Next thing they were both down in the dirt and Conrad was on top with the razor raised.

Bill thought it was just as good Phil hadn’t gone into the money collection racket. He wasn’t worth a shit at intimidation. In a moment they’d have to get someone fresh to run the whirligig and Conrad would be on his way to doing about three hundred years in prison, or maybe, like a dog nobody wanted, he might get put to sleep by law enforcement.

Out of nowhere Frost appeared. He was in his white silk shorts, and his skin was white in the light and his head was whiter yet. Bill could see the hand on his chest, flopping about as Frost moved, as if it were signaling directions. It was a dark hand now, like it had been dipped in black paint.

Frost had hold of Conrad’s neck. To Bill’s amazement, he picked Conrad up, jerked him up so hard the razor flew from his hand. Conrad flailed about. Phil jumped up, and seeing an opening, he kicked Conrad in one of his dangling legs.

Frost’s free hand shot out and caught Phil by the back of the neck as well. He pulled him forward, slammed Phil and Conrad together and dropped them unconscious to the ground. Frost took a deep breath, stood over them like a stern god. Bill, who had eased forward, saw the hand on Frost’s chest was dark because it wore a thin black glove.

U.S. Grant was out of her trailer in a flash. She sat down on the wet grass, took hold of Conrad’s head, put it in her lap, and stroked his snout. Phil moaned a little. Bill, and most everyone else in the carnival, stood over him and looked at his nakedness. Even Double Buckwheat was there, their music still playing in the background. “A Lover’s Question” now.

Yep, a peanut, Bill thought. Everyone from the pinheads to the pumpkin heads to the assorted freaks were nodding and mumbling about the same thing. They had all heard the story.

Frost bent down and looked at Conrad. Conrad’s eyes blinked. Frost said, “Sorry, boy. I can’t let you kill someone.” Then to Phil: “Phil, get something around you and come to my trailer. I’ll patch up those cuts. If it’s bad, we’ll take you to the emergency room.”

“Cuts ain’t bad,” Phil said, pushing his hair back with his hand, flicking his wrist to remove grease from his fingers. “Not that fuckin’ Butch the Show Dog here didn’t try.”

Conrad jerked as if to get up, but Frost pushed a palm in his chest and Conrad fell back into U.S. Grant’s lap. She stroked his head and said, “Sorry, Conrad. I’m so, so, so sorry.”

“Were y’all… fuckin’?”

“Yes. But it wasn’t any good. He wasn’t any good. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You wasn’t no good neither,” Phil said. “It didn’t matter which beard I was pokin’. It was the same bad.”

“You took him in your mouth?” Conrad said.

“It didn’t go in far,” she said. “There wasn’t enough of it to reach the back of my throat.”

Conrad groaned. Phil cussed and said, “It’s just cold is all. It wasn’t cold you’d see some dick, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you.”

One of Double Buckwheat’s heads said, “That ain’t no half-hard dick.” The other said, “We got dicks bigger’n that.”

“Go to hell,” Phil said, getting up.

“It didn’t mean nothing,” U.S. Grant said to Conrad, stroking his head. “It didn’t mean a thing.”

Conrad made a sound in his throat like someone trying to swallow a golf ball. U.S. Grant tried to help him to his feet, but couldn’t quite do it, and Conrad didn’t have the will to manage.

Bill went over and got Conrad onto all fours. Conrad nodded at him, then without a word he and U.S. Grant made for her trailer. She had a big patch of mud and grass on the back of her nightgown, and Bill was surprised to find himself feeling sorry for her. He had never really thought he could be concerned with a bearded lady’s problems.

Conrad looked like he’d just been in the dogfight to end all dogfights, but his head was up, and he looked proud enough to drop his pants, lift a leg, and piss on a trailer tire. Instead he went up and inside and U.S. Grant closed the door.

Frost put a hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Good man,” he said.

Bill felt a warmth rise inside him. It was a feeling he didn’t entirely understand.

“You boys,” Frost said to Double Buckwheat, “turn off that music and go to bed. And you’ve been drinkin’, I can tell. Tomorrow, we get rid of all your booze. You two can’t drink. You know that.”

“We can we want to,” said one head.

Frost gave him a look. The other head replied promptly, “But we don’t want to.”

“Better,” Frost said.

The music playing now was “Blue Moon,” and “the boys” followed its notes into their trailer, closed the door, and just as the Temptations began to sing “Can’t Get Next to You,” the music went off.

Bill watched Frost head back to his trailer, the hand flapping, his huge white body floating across the wet night grass. He saw Gidget standing in the doorway of the motor home, framed by a light from inside. She had on a pair of panties so brief they might have been made out of strip of black Christmas ribbon. You could see the dark outline of blond hair trimming the edges of the cloth. She wore a matching top that only went over the tops of her breasts. The smooth bottoms of her breasts were like two beautiful moons dipping out of cloud cover. She stared at Bill, then went inside.

Frost went up the steps and into the trailer. A moment later, Phil, with a towel around his waist and bleeding from his superficial wounds, went after him, looking for all the world like a boy on his way to the principal’s office. As he passed, Bill said, “Reckon when you jumped out of that trailer something rejogged your brain.”

“What?”

“Knocked something loose in there so you don’t have to suffer from a half-hard dick all the time.”

“Fuck you.”

“What with?”

Phil was defeated now, his head dropped another degree toward his chest. It was obvious he wouldn’t be able to collect money from deadbeats and no one was wondering about the size of his half-hard dick anymore. He couldn’t even control U.S. Grant the bearded lady, didn’t have enough dick to fill her mouth, so how was he going to run a string of whores? It was the whirligig and hair grease for him, and that was it.